Professor in History, University of Reading
Helen Parish is a historian with interests in religion and belief in early modern Europe. She has written on the history of clerical celibacy and marriage in the western Church, as well as debates over superstition, miracles, magic, witchcraft, and early modern natural history.
She is the author of Clerical Marriage and the English Reformation (Ashgate, 2000) and Clerical Celibacy in the West (Ashgate, 2010), and a range of books and articles on the history of the Reformation, religious belief, and the supernatural in early modern Europe.
Why iconic trees are so important to us – and how replacing those that fall is often complicated
Dec 05, 2023 05:38 am UTC| Nature
An ancient kola tree has been cut down in southern Ghana. Local tradition held that the tree had grown on the spot where spiritual leader Komfo Anokye had spat a kola nut onto the ground three centuries...
Roman Catholic priests have been celibate for a thousand years – but this could change
Jan 23, 2020 10:55 am UTC| Insights & Views Life
For almost a thousand years, Roman Catholic priests have been required to be celibate. But this age-old practice is now under fire, with the suggestion that the rules should be relaxed for the Latin American Catholic...